Final Reflection

Today was a very emotional and influential day as it holds the most weight to me for the trip in it’s entirety. Today was what we called “Final Reflection Day” which is the conclusion to the grand Global Glimpse Experience here in San Juan De La Maguana of the Dominican Republic. It was truly a blessing to be the final Glimpser writing and closing this experience as Leader of the Day for this trip, so with that being said, lets begin.

Our day started off as a usual morning, but it was different, like the atmosphere just had something more nostalgic and heavy. Of course I woke everyone up on time and made sure they had everything set for breakfast but it was definitely more unique. Every action played through my head, “This is the last time I’ll be drinking water in the morning here, the last time I wake up with my roommates and enjoy their presence, the last time for many many things that hit pretty hard. That being said, we all had breakfast afterwards which I was low-key stressing about since I don’t want to mess anything up as the LDD. I made sure we were on time, which lead to us waiting like 30 minutes for Charlie, our food provider, to come and serve us breakfast. We had mashed potatoes, avocado salad, eggs, and fried cheese which was pretty great.

Moving on, we fast forward to our next activity which was our program seminar in which we did a lot of bonding activities that got quite emotional and made me feel super special ;). Shoutout to da boyz for being the best brothers I can have on this trip. We also had some deep conversations about our best and worst moments in our trip during the final self reflection with our groups. It was a little shocking, shocking to see how we are actually going to be leaving the DR after all we have been through, after we had the Pittini, our hostel, become a home to us all for the past 2 weeks.

After the activity we had explore time which everyone kind of did their own thing like buy souvenirs, eat food, or just chill until we had Lunch. We ate rice, beans, pot roast, and avocado salad during lunch and it was pretty great overall. It was kinda crazy, I know for me, I was counting down every hour, every experience until we leave, taking in everything since it is the last time we are going to be here. After Lunch we just had some more explore time, my group was with Da Boyz, we ate at super cafe, a restaurant, which offered pretty good wings. We ordered a combined total of around 50 and had a great time getting fat.

Shortly after, we came back to the hostel to get ready, pack, and freshen up for the English Tutoring, always have to be our best selves when we are going to teach some kids English. Anyways, our way there involved a lot of thinking on my part, thinking about how my group as teachers are going to make an impact in the lives and memories of the kids we had. As we got there, I was sad, sad to see all these kids having progressed so far with their English and Numbers, starting at just 10 and ending to 100. It was unbelievable how a group of teenagers can make such a change, I for one didn’t think I had it in me. We taught them more about nature, and basic vocabulary as well as more numbers for the most part and we had them draw pictures of us so we can feel special afterwards. Seeing students go, and I can speak for all on this, was probably one of the more heart breaking moments we as a group experienced on this trip.

As we walked back to the hostel to get ready, we realized the day is almost at an end. We packed some more, freshened up, and made sure we looked our best because we were going to Rosarios, Charlie’s restaurant, for our final dinner. There we had a great night club scene with decent music and dancing. I couldn’t dance much due to my migraines but it looked like the group was having a blast. It was truly a great ending to something greater. After the dancing, we ate food which consisted of pizza and soda. I thought it was really nice for a change considering we were eating like 5 star athletes for the past two weeks. After dinner, we signed flags and just enjoyed each others presence which was super more emotional than I thought. Once we said our goodbyes, we headed back to the hostel for the nightly meeting, saying big loves, the best and the bad of the trip, and my rating for LDD which was great from what I heard, the only downside was my callout being “I WANT,….. WINGSTOP”. But what can I say, I was craving wingstop for the past two weeks lol. Then we signed more flags and pretty much said bye to our ambassadors ;(. I think we are all going to miss them dearly. Despite the sadness, we did our closing routine and prepped for the journey back home.

As the LDD today, I experienced what it was like to be a leader of people I met for like 2 weeks, kinda crazy. I had a decent amount of experience before, having several varsity letters in my high school athletic career, it really helped me with the process. I think the most essential part of being a leader is to earn that title, have the respect of everyone, be accountable, be reliable, and do the extra on everything. Of course I lacked some of these on some occasions but if I were to put it in a quote from someone very special to me, it’s “If you can’t lead yourself, then you can’t lead others”. That being said, I’m going to continue these good habits once I return home. To close this blog, I want to thank all the parents, friends, other glimpsers, PCs, GGLs, Ambassadors, literally everyone for supporting us on our journey and allowing me to close this blog on such an amazing experience. Thank you and see you all soon.